BT hopes to show off the potential of its fibre-to-the-premises technology in the new year, with a trial in Suffolk that will push downstream speeds up to 1Gbit/s.
The purely technical exercise in Kesgrave, involving engineers from BT's nearby Martlesham Heath labs, will aim for a downstream speed ten times the 100Mbit/s offered to customers at launch. The upstream needle will meanwhile be pushed to 400Mbit/s.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/03/bt_gigabit/
I notice that they don't want to let us mere mortals near it in case we put a strain on it. :)
I can't help wondering why they feel a need to demonstrate the feasibility of getting 1Gbps from one place to another along a fibre... what do their main backbones use?
The exercise is pure fluff, imho.
You have a good point, Bill. Nice PR job by BT though.
A bit lame when they had 40GB working in Sweden ;)
I've never denied that if BT's technical side was as good as their PR department, most ISPs could shut down their support numbers :mad:
Most ISPs' backbones operate at 1 Gbps as well as the hostlinks being at this speed so BT is proving absolutely nothing.
What will they prove next, that electricity travels best over gold?
No, Mitch. That electricity travelling over their cables is, to them, gold. ;)
They had stones, though. ;D
Does the home user really need speeds that fast?
Not really unless you have a few hundred servers in your garage.
We need an electrical engineer. :)
Rather than focussing 1Gb/s in certain areas, why not give EVERYONE a respectable connection. In the year 2010 my connection is the same 1Mb/s as it was ten years ago. Rural Britain has been well and truly forgotten about.
The speed follows the profits. :(